Guest Columnist

For many a U.S. newsman, one of the most spectacular accolades that can come his way is to be reprinted, uncensored, in Russia. Last week this distinction befell a newcomer to the ranks of political correspondents: James A. Wechsler, 45, of the liberal New York Post (circ. 343,140). Without changing a line, Russia's two leading dailies, Pravda (6,300,000) and Izvestia (2,300,000), carried in full the second part of a two-part Wechsler profile of President John Kennedy.

The Red space grab was Wechsler's own idea. Only recently relieved of some of his duties as Post editor (while keeping the title), Wechsler has begun to grind out a column. Early in his new career he wangled a long afternoon's chat with the President.

A Question of Sanity. Halfway through the job of recording two columns' worth of impressions, Wechsler was struck by the idea that the Russians ought to be reading what he was writing. "It has become commonplace," he wrote, "for Premier Khrushchev to grant audiences to American journalists and tell them he is a misunderstood man who only seeks peace and good will. Such utterances are quite properly reported at length in the U.S., because what Russia's leader says at any moment is news, whether or not he says what he means or means what he says. By the same standard, it is my hope that Pravda and Izvestia will reprint this portrait of the President of the United States."

Russian readers must have been mystified--if not shocked--at seeing the sanity of their leader challenged in print--even by an outsider. Both Pravda and Izvestia prefaced the Wechsler columns with statements disavowing their contents ("This article is of definite interest, although the editors cannot agree with some of its propositions"). Nevertheless, they let Wechsler have his full say: "In the twilight of a gray afternoon, I sat with a man one year younger than myself whose decisions may be the final ones of our century. He is the son of a very wealthy man, and therefore the perfect caricature for the Communist propagandists who like to equate all our deeds with the mischievous plots of 'Wall Street imperialists.' If that doctrinaire rubbish is what Mr. Khrushchev believes, he is mad and we are all doomed."

Blast at the Boss. Russians may well have been permitted to read this outsider's blast at the boss because some of Wechsler's impressions of the President came very close to what Soviet leaders would like their countrymen to think. Kennedy struck Wechsler as a man who is now willing to negotiate just about everything: "To put it another way, there can be full negotiation about the future of Germany and of China and almost any explosive area if Mr. Khrushchev is ready to negotiate rather than to dictate." This is not quite the image that John Kennedy has of himself--as he demonstrated in his speech before the U.N. General Assembly (see THE WORLD). Nor did the true Kennedy come off the presses of Pravda and Izvestia as faithfully as the Wechsler version. As printed in Moscow, President Kennedy's U.N. address was carefully shorn of reference to the resoluteness of the free world.

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